Insane Heroism

Monday, 2 January 2017

Was all the message said. Was all it needed to say. In that one word Veddack had been granted the full authority to pursue a resolution of this unwarranted IIC intrusion using whatever means he deemed fit.

Alas due to the vagaries of long range astropathic communication, the IIC had already landed and begun broadcasting by the time the message arrived. This meant that the most expedient option of blowing their ship apart upon arrival, was no longer viable.

Veddack checked his internal Chronometer, 23:52.48 EST. The magos leaned back allowing himself to become fully immersed in the noospheric data realm. Information followed through and around him, allowing him to perform actions at a rate that would astonish even the astartes. he checked his internal systems correcting a 0.2° phase variance in mechcandrite drives, satisfied that everything was running at peak efficiency he quickly trawled through the stations servitor inventories until he found a suitably equipped model and uploaded a new set of instructions. Moving on he checked the stations camouflage systems. The equipment the IIC had brought with them would have struggled to find the facility had they been firing the defence lasers into space, fortunately the IIC had never been blessed with a particularly large budget. Even though, one could never be too careful. Systems seemed normal though the frequency of one of the optical emitters was fluctuating from previous readings. He despatched a repair log to the priest responsible for their maintenance. Once the proper prayers and rituals had been performed he was sure the emitters machine spirit would be appeased. His next action was to wake the skitarii. As part of the force located in the facility they were intended to act as the first quick response in the event of an attack. Although today they would serve a different purpose. A squad of vanguard, infiltrators and a dunecrawler were available for immediate deployment. Veddack himself would lead them it would prove an opportune time to test his latest combat wetware in action.

Utilising his facilities powerful communications array, he launched an attack on the IIC surveillance equipment. Breaking though their aegis protocols was childs play. Hiding his intrusion as background noise he expertly worked through the data captured on the implanted feral orks. If he could end them the IIC would have no reason the remain in-system. Subject B was the first target. Having set himself apart from his ork brethren he would prove an easy target. Veddack hacked into the monitors observing the young ork and buried a command to loop playback at his signal. Carefully extracting himself from the system making sure to cover his tracks, one link drew his attention. A seemingly insignificant data pad connection. A passive probe revealed that this connection was protected by some of the strongest aegis protocols Veddack had seen.

Curbing his curiosity, Veddack returned to his physical shell. The restrictive nature of physical concerns felt taxing after the noospheric connection. Checking his internal Chronometer 4 seconds had passed. 12% longer than expected but within his normal performance metrics. "let us begin"

3 miles away in the facility. Along corridors that hadn't been used for decades. A servitor that had been scouring the walkway flashed with an updated command set. It's connection light blinking rapidly with new directives being written. Stopping it's previous task the servitor set off into the depths of the facility.

Surveillance satellites detected an imperial ship entering the system at the Mandeville point. Cross references with imperial databases estimate a 98.47% chance that the ship is the IIC cruiser currently assigned to Achtenburg. IIC broadcasts reveal the Biologis Scholar is intending to study feral ork society. The facility was located on this planet partly because of the lack of strategic value and feral ork infestation making the planet unattractive to imperial or xenos interests. Probability of discovery has increased by 34.2% in light of the IIC presence. A 35.1% probability exceeds safe margins.

Thursday, 2 June 2016

I recently attended the
inaugural London grand tournament, with a total of 86 attendees this was quite
a large tournament, and the largest that I have attended. I took my Tau as per
my previous post. I’ll just post a quick run through of my games rather than a
detailed account of the action.

Game 1, vs chaos sorcerer
cabal and zombie horde. With Typhus and cypher.

So this game I was playing
against ~120 plague zombies with the sorcerer cabal having five level 3
sorcerers. With their ability to take control of one of my models for shooting.
With the obvious target of the Stormsurge of this power, I was hesitant to
deploy too much of my army. My opponent deployed two large zombie blobs one
with two sorcerers and the other with typhus and a sorcerer. He had a large
squad of chaos spawn deployed behind typhus's blob. Cypher and one sorcerer
were outflanking with one of the zombie hordes.

I deployed my storm surge and
ghostkeels far apart to prevent the sorcerer cabal taking too much of a toll in
the first turn. Keeping the rest of my army in reserve.

He marched his hordes forward
in the first turn, successfully using the storm surge to kill a drone from the
ghostkeel unit. But failing to cast invisibility on himself. He then made what
I thought was a mistake by gating next to my storm surge. In my turn I used to
wall of mirrors to kill a couple of the chaos spawn before charging into his
gated unit with the storm surge and stomping all over them until there was only
a single zombie left. In the following turns in managed to six out Typhus with
a D hit that he failed to look out sir. When his reserves arrived I intercepted
them with a lot of my army to reduce their numbers and then charge in with a
riptide to tie them up. The tide survived on a single wound and he hit and run
out of combat. In his final turn his remaining models killed the riptide and
then I retaliated by killing the rest of his unit. Wiping him out for a full
win.

Game two.

In this round we were playing
end game objectives and a the maelstrom mission where you generate objectives
based on the number of objectives you control. I was playing battle company...

My opponent had the battle
company with basic upgrades, an entire parking lot of razorbacks and the
vindicator formation along with some drop podding dreadnoughts for flavour.

My opponent won first turn,
which gave me a chance at the end game objectives. I knew that I wouldn't win
the maelstrom for the secondary's against that many obsec units, but fancied my
chances at the end game. My opponent started by moving up into the mid table
grabbing as many objectives as possible. I took the fight to the enemy with the
ghostkeels excelling in killing space marine vehicles. Three tanks a turn fell
to these elite vehicle hunters. The Stormsurge unfortunately spent a lot of the
game tied up with a single marine in combat (I rolled double 1 to wound three
turns in a row).

The rest of my army was
slowly chewing its way through the marines, being careful to stay in a mutually
supportive position. My opponent didn’t have a huge amount of weapons that posed
a significant threat to me once the vindicators were taken care of.

We had to rush through the
last turns to try and get to the end of the game, but I ended up holding four
objectives to the space marines 1. However the maelstrom went completely to the
marines. Had we had time for another turn, I would have killed the two
remaining marines and the final drop pod to table my opponent. As it was the
game ended on a narrow victory for myself.

Game 3

With two wins under my belt I
was doing a lot better than I expected. But the narrow win against the battle
company meant I dropped down through the rankings. The next mission was kill
points. (battle company would have been a great opponent in this one).

In this round I was facing
Grey Knights using the new angels of death powers. With an allied skyhammer
annihilation force running lots of grav cannons. The grey knight portion of the
army composed of two nemesis dreadknights and two large terminator squads with
attached librarians.

I got the infiltrate warlord
trait and infiltrated my Stormsurge and stealth cadre to get some shots on his
dreadknights. My commander infiltrated into a building to get in range with the
markerlights so I could D shot his dreadknights.

The game started well for me with
both of his dreadknights being torn apart by destroyer missiles and D shots
from the pulse blastcannon. I intercepted his skyhammer devestators taking all
the grav cannons from one squad while the other squad remained untouched. One
of the assault squads mishaped on the deepstrike going into ongoing reserves.

His return fire put the grav
cannons into one of the riptides who survived on one wound thanks to his nova
charged shields. The assault squad charged into my commander and drones keeping
them tied up in combat for most of the game, with the commander eventually
emerging victorious.

In later turns the game
boiled down to a combat between his remaining terminators and the Stormsurge,
riptide and ghostkeels. By the time the combat had ended my Stormsurge, two
ghost keels and a single riptide were victorious. Leaving my opponent with a
drop pod and he conceded.

So at the end of game three I
was 3-0 up on wins, so even if I lost my next two I would have still achieved
the 3-2 I set out to at the start of the tournament.

However this also meant that I would be facing the top tier tables in the next round...

Thursday, 26 May 2016

As some of you may know, there is a tournament coming up in London this weekend. As my interest in 40K has been rekindled recently, I have decided to go along and try my hand. I don't expect to do too well as my experience has been somewhat limited in regards to gaming. However I thought I would post a copy of the list I am taking. My force will be as follows:

The tournament is limited to two sources, decurion style detachments use up both slots. I have decided to go down the hunter contingent route as this will hopefully allow me to maximise the use of my limited markerlights. I was really impressed with the damage output from the optimised stealth cadre in my last tournament so decided to re use them at this event. The rest of the army is pretty self explanatory. The drone commander will go with the marker drones to hopefully allow me to hit something with the D missiles pretty hard in the first turn or two of the game. Riptides are awesome, although the limit to two sources prevents the addition of a riptide wing. That, and I only have two riptides. :). The firewarriors in the hunter cadre are there to secure objectives and also useful for buffing the ballistic skill of another unit through combined fire. I'm also hoping that their sms turrets will help against warp spiders. The storm surge is there as a D platform to hopefully take out other superheavies in a flurry of D missiles. The EWO will prove handy for intercepting drop pods. But I'm not convinced by the use of a singular storm surge. I think they excel in pairs but one is outclasses by other super heavies by a large margin. On thee other hand, it did perform pretty well on its own in a 1500 point tournament.Anyway, that's all for my list. Hopefully it wont go too badly.

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Just wanted to post a quick work in progress shot of the latest addition to my Tau army. The rust effect looks a little over the top in the photo. But the flash from the camera shows it up far more than in actually looks in daylight. I recently got to try the optimised stealth cadre in a tournament. I was hugely impressed with their performance. They took huge chunks out of a war convocation, survived an eldar D fest, and took an impressive toll against another Tau army. I will definitely be using these guys again soon.

Friday, 26 September 2014

I had developed a super weapon, a fortress hidden beneath the wastes of this planet that when finished, would fly across the galaxy and unleash awesome destructive power. With it I would free my cousins from the yoke of Orkish oppression, and maybe blow up a planet or two just for shits and giggles...

But now it's all ruined, the whole thing destroyed, because of some random dirt eating flyboy Ork...

I suppose my overconfidence was my weakness...

Who'd have thought someone would drop explosives down a small thermal exhaust port. Knew I should have put a gate on that thing...

Now at the top of Ereyous deathlist... when the revolution comes my friend...